Musician Nick Cave has taken to his website The Red Hand Files to share a beautiful message about dealing with the loss of his son, Arthur.

He was responding to a fan on the site, who asked: “Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?”

“This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it,” started Cave, before detailing his thoughts.

“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.”

He continued to speak about feeling the precedes of his son all around him. “I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there,” he said. “He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there.”

Nick and Susie’s son sadly died in 2015 after falling from a cliff in Ovingdean Gap, near Brighton.